- Doyin Okupe says France president, Macron, defected from a party to become the president of the country
- Okupe predicts the 2019 presidential election would be keenly contested
- He says it is very difficult to impeach the president of the Senate because he defected
Doyin Okupe, an ex-aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan, has declared that it would be very difficult to impeach Bukola Saraki, the president of the Senate following his defection from the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Okupe also wondered why Nigerians treat political defections as strange when, in actual fact, it happens all over the world.
In an interview with the Nigerian Tribune, Okupe said: “Defection is a political move that happens everywhere in the world. Government and administration is different.
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“The government is different from political parties. The game political parties play to outsmart each other is a different ball game. It should not be seen as an enemy move.
“It is the practice all over the world. In Britain, in the last five years, 60 members of their parliament crossed from one party to the other. I wonder why in this part of the world we make it look as if it is something strange. In India, parliamentarians recently left one party to cross to the other.
“The incumbent president of France, Macron, was a member of the ruling party, he was a federal minister and he left the ruling party to form his own party. He contested and he won. So why are we bothered with defections?
“We have to be cerebral in some of these things because there are too many unpalatable arguments you hear from quarters you do not expect and it is extremely embarrassing. The constitution is quite clear on this.
"For you to remove the Senate president, you require two-third majority of the senators which is sacrosanct, but the argument that he was not elected by the whole house does not hold water. The process of election is different from the process of removal; it is clearly spelt out in the constitution,” he said in the interview.
Reacting to calls for Saraki’s resignation on moral ground, Okupe further noted that there is no morality in political positions.
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“On moral grounds, will you tell the president of the country to resign because he promised so many things and he has not fulfilled them? It is not done anywhere! You can resign your position if for instance you find out that the Senate president was involved in a mafia position that would in a way cast a slur.
“But the erroneous thing that is making people talk about a moral ground is because they feel it is compulsory that the Senate president or the leadership of the National Assembly should come from the ruling party. It is a fallacy,” he declared just as he predicted a tight presidential contest in 2019.
NAIJ.com earlier reported that the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, accused the Senate president, Bukola Saraki, of leading the legislative chamber against national interest.
Oshiomhole said this in an interview published by The Guardian where he explained how Saraki allegedly dragged the government of President Muhammadu Buhari backward.
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Source: Naija.ng